The smallest campaign ever

For years, operatives, reporters and potential nominees envisioned the 2012 presidential campaign as a titanic clash of media-swarmed combatants with big ideas about the future. In the Republican primaries, this was almost a mantra: this is the most important campaign in a generation.

So why does it feel so small?

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Dating to the beginning of the cycle, 2012 has unfolded so far as a grinding, joyless slog, falling short in every respect of the larger-than-life personalities and debates of the 2008 campaign.

There have been small-ball presidential campaigns before, but veteran strategists and observers agree this race is reaching a record degree of triviality. Nothing previously can compare with a race being fought hour by hour in 140-character Twitter increments and blink-and-you-miss-it cable segments. Not to mention an endless flood of caustic television ads.

Blame the campaign strategist, blame the operatives, blame the reporters. They know it’s a drag. And they know they’re responsible.

They would argue: We’re powerless to stop it.

The Obama and Romney campaigns spend all day strafing each other on Twitter, all while decrying the campaign’s lack of serious ideas for a serious time. Yet at most junctures when they’ve had the opportunity to go big, they’ve chosen to go small. Obama has spoken in broad strokes about his accomplishments but has not yet outlined a detailed agenda for a second term. Romney has openly declared that he will not detail his policy proposals — slashing the size of government, for example — so as to avoid giving his opponents ammunition.

Instead, they have embraced a campaign that has been defined almost entirely by tactics and daily trench warfare, whether that’s the chair of the Democratic Party labeling Romney a “job cremator” or the Romney campaign driving its campaign bus in circles around an Obama event honking the horn, in a stunt right out of a third-tier frat house. Some antics satisfy their partisans but don’t focus the national dialogue.

“Here’s the sad part: They all believe it’s a total crock but they can’t abandon it,” said Todd Purdum, the Vanity Fair editor and former New York Times White House reporter. “Who’s going to say, in the middle of an election year, we’re going to come up with a new system and here’s how we’re going to play, and everyone’s going to come along? History’s shown that’s not too successful.”

Purdum continued: “Both campaigns right now are in a kind of defensive crouch. They’re both very tightly clenched and I don’t think either one sees any advantage in talking expansively or philosophically.”

“For the first time in my memory, we have a presidential race in which neither one of these candidates really likes to campaign,” added Dan Rather, the longtime national news anchor who now hosts HDNet’s “Dan Rather Reports.” “They’re not naturals like a Ronald Reagan or a Bill Clinton. I can’t remember a race in my lifetime when you had candidates in both parties who didn’t really like to campaign.”

The expanding and hyperactive press corps doesn’t help matters, Rather said.

“You have not just a 24-hour news cycle but a deadline every nanosecond. … So much of the reporting focuses on who said what in the last five minutes and who said what in response to that,” he explained, musing that the tenor of the race could change after Labor Day. “I think reporters, together with the inaccessibility of candidates, get caught up in a kind of ennui, if you will — it’s probably the only French word you’ll ever hear me use — and we are only in June.”